How much would an advertising campaign cost to highlight Alicante as the number one tourist destination in Europe, illustrated with beautiful images of its streets and beaches in a wide variety of media: news channels, prestigious business magazines and popular tabloids? Too much, without a doubt, for the municipal coffers. However, Alicante has an ungovernable element, alien to public management or private initiative, which from time to time gives it extra notoriety that invites tourists from all over the continent to choose it as a destination: the sun.
This week it has happened again. Holidu, a popular online search engine for vacation rentals, has considered that the end of winter is a good time to publish the list of the cities with the most guarantee of sunshine. And, using data from World Weather Online, he has compiled a ranking according to the average monthly hours of sunshine in the three hundred most populated cities in Europe from 2009 to 2021. Result? Gold medal: In Alicante there are 349 hours a month, two hours more than in Catania, Italy, but, as Luis Aragonés said, who remembers the runner-up?
The list has been reproduced by the Euronews news channel, by Forbes in an article entitled Looking For Sun? The Best European Destinations For The Sunniest Spring Break, and by the travel sections of various British tabloids; an interesting boost for a tourism sector that, given the records of travelers registered by the Alicante-Elche-Miguel Hernández airport in January and February, is confident that 2023 will be an extraordinary year.
After Alicante and Catania, the "bronze" of the championship of sunny cities goes to Murcia, in a ranking that is shared, of course, by southern European destinations: Malaga, Messina (Sicily), Valencia, Nice, Las Palmas , Granada and Palermo distribute the rest of the first ten places. Behind, up to thirty cities, most of them Spanish and Italian, except for Marseille, Tirana and Athens.
As it is the time to pack your bags for the Easter holidays, and the summer holidays if you are farsighted and do not want to risk paying more or not finding what you want, there are rankings like the one we mentioned for all tastes and everything. type of travelers The popular The Sun chooses, for example, the best destinations for partying (Beer to go). And Valencia gets the prize? of being considered the third European city of partying, after Lisbon and Madrid.
What have the editors of the English tabloid seen in placid Lisbon? Actually, it wasn't them, but another internet portal -Bounce- that has analyzed European cities from the point of view of their number of bars, nightclubs, beer prices and even security.
According to the study, Lisbon, in addition to having a vibrant nightlife, offers a pint of beer at the unbeatable price of £2.15. That places it ahead of Madrid, Valencia ("which is not usually associated with partying, but the study has found a good number of bars and nightclubs, with beer at an average cost of 3 pounds", says the publication ), and cities as beer-producing as Prague and Munich.
